Most ICD Patients Die Of Heart Failure

Patients with implantable defibrillators (ICDs) or resynchronization devices with defibrillator (CRT-Ds) were most likely to die of heart failure or noncardiac causes, not sudden death, a single-center study found.

Of the 2,859 patients included in the analysis, the 8-year cumulative incidence for heart failure death was 8.6 percent among patients with an ICD for primary prevention and 9.6 percent among secondary prevention ICD patients, and 22.6 percent for those with a CRT-D (log rankP<0.001), reported Martin J. Schalij, MD, PhD, and colleagues from Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden, The Netherlands.

Conversely, the 8-year cumulative incidence of sudden death was 2.1 percent and 3.2 percnet in the primary and secondary prevention ICD patients, and 3.6 percent in those with a CRT-D (log rank P=0.026), according to the study published online in the journal HeartRhythm.